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Robert Frost and His Famous Poems - Robert Frost holds a unique and almost isolated position in American letters. In a sense, Frost stands at the crossroads of 19th-century American poetry and modernism, for in his verse may be found the culmination of many 19th-century tendencies and traditions as well as parallels to the works of his 20th-century contemporaries. Taking his symbols from the public domain, Frost developed, as many critics note, an original, modern idiom and a sense of directness and economy that reflect the imagism of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.

ChildhoodRobert Frost was born to journalist father William Prescott Frost, Jr. and mother Isabelle Moodie. After William’s death in May 1885, the family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts.Education

In 1982, Robert Frost graduated from Lawrence High School. Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult. Frost grew up in the city, and he published his first poem in his high school's magazine.Career

In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly An Elegy" to the New York Independent for $15. From 1906 to 1911, he joined New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy as an English teacher and later joined New Hampshire Normal School in Plymouth, New Hampshire. In 1912, Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, in a small town outside London. In 1913 his first book of poetry “A Boy's Will” got published and “North of Boston” in 1914.With the start of World War I, Robert Frost returned to America in 1915 and settled in New Hampshire. From 1916 onwards he joined Amherst College in Massachusetts as a teacher in English and became active in writing career. His noted work “West Running Brook”, “The Gold Hesperidee”, “From Snow to Snow” and much more came during this period.Awards and Honors

Robert Frost received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for “New Hampshire”, followed by in 1931 for Collected Poems, in 1937 for “A Further Range” and in 1943 for “A Witness Tree”. In 1960, he received the United States Congressional Gold Medal for "In recognition of his poetry” which enabled the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world.At the End

He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution. On 29th January, 1963, he died in Boston, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claimBecause it was grassy and wanted wear,Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to wayI doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

More than halfway up the passWas a spring with a broken drinking glass,And whether the farmer drank or notHis mare was sure to observe the spotBy cramping the wheel on a water-bar,turning her forehead with a star,And straining her ribs for a monster sigh;To which the farmer would make reply,'A sigh for every so many breath,And for every so many sigh a death.

That's what I always tell my wifeIs the multiplication table of life.'The saying may be ever so true;But it's just the kind of a thing that youNor I, nor nobody else may say,Unless our purpose is doing harm,And then I know of no better wayTo close a road, abandon a farm,Reduce the births of the human race,And bring back nature in people's place.

But it isn't as ifThere wasn't always Hudson's BayAnd the fur trade,A small skiffAnd a paddle blade.

I can just see my tent pegged,And me on the floor,Cross-legged,And a trapper looking in at the doorWith furs to sell.

His name's Joe,Alias John,And between what he doesn't knowAnd won't tellAbout where Henry Hudson's gone,I can't say he's much help;But we get on.

The seal yelpOn an ice cake.

It's not men by some mistake?No,There's not a soulFor a windbreakBetween me and the North Pole—Except always John-Joe,My French Indian Esquimaux,And he's off setting trapsIn one himself perhaps.

Give a headshakeOver so much bayThrown awayIn snow and mistThat doesn't exist,I was going to say,For God, man, or beast's sake,Yet does perhaps for all three.

Don't ask JoeWhat it is to him.

It's sometimes dimWhat it is to me,Unless it beIt's the old captain's dark fateWho failed to find or force a straitIn its two-thousand-mile coast;And his crew left him where be failed,And nothing came of all be sailed.

t's to say, 'You and I—'To such a ghost—You and IOff hereWith the dead race of the Great Auk!'And, 'Better defeat almost,If seen clear,Than life's victories of doubtThat need endless talk-talkTo make them out.'